Competitor's marketing : How banks acquire and react to knowledge about their competitor's marketing.

Abstract: Abstract   Introduction The way banks compete has changed dramatically during recent years, mostly because of international trends such as advances in information technology, globalisation and deregulations. This has made competition harsher meaning that survival and success requires knowledge about the competitors and understanding about the way they act and react. Within marketing there is a need to identify suitable strategies to acquire knowledge about competitor’s marketing and methods to how to react to it.   Purpose The purpose of our research study is to analyse how companies in the bank industry are aware and react to their competitor’s marketing activities.   Method We have conducted a qualitative study and used a mix of the inductive and deductive research approaches. We chose to do semi-structured case studies, gathering descriptive data from large Swedish banks with offices located in Jönköping. The banks that were included were Handelsbanken, Nordea, SEB, and Swedbank.   Conclusions Our analysis concludes that staying aware of competitors marketing is important for companies to be able to react and counter on a promotion attack. We found that there are certain methods that can be used to stay alert: competitor marketing analysis, customer focus and probing. We also concluded that standardisation, differentiation and presence are required to react to competitors marketing.